from CBC News (Canada)
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Bravado in Baghdad
Don Murray, CBC TV | February 10, 2002
Don Murray is the Senior European Correspondent for CBC Television News. His reports appear regularly on The National.
This article first appeared in Maclean’s magazine’s February 17, 2003 edition.
These are the preparations for war.
In the centre of Baghdad a tent village has sprung up. Like some latter-day migratory tribe of carrion-feeders, the television networks of the world have converged on the roof of the Ministry of Information. The tribe has brought its tools - large and small satellite dishes, and lights and cameras to record reporters sending messages of daily inspections, daily insults and deepening gloom.
Generators hum. A month ago this was just an outpost. There were perhaps eight wood frame-and-canvas structures. Now there are 47.
Below mill the press tribe, the lucky working in cubicles in this smoky space, the unlucky begging for their own. All must step around workers and over piles of brick and mortar. Sensing a substantial source of profit before Armageddon, the ministry is busily building more cubicles. For the press centre charges hefty fees for its services, roughly $250 a day per person simply to have the right to work, and more for the cubicles.
The 'services' include promises of news conferences or meetings with senior officials. Many of these promised events simply vanish like smoke in a storm. The services also include 'minders' who must accompany reporters on their expeditions outside the press centre. Baghdad is a sprawling city of 4.8 million people. Thanks to the minders, the outside world only gets a limited glimpse of this society. In their presence, Iraqis carefully parrot the agreed line - we are not afraid, we will fight for our country and our leader, why does America persecute us?
There are not enough minders. Journalists fight for them. Minders get richer. Yet some, even as the dollars fill their pockets, wax nostalgic.
"I was a film censor before this," one said. "I just sat and watched foreign films. Then I took out the sex and violence."
He did more; he began re-editing films before they were released. He became a ghost director: "I improved the stories." As for his preferences: "I love John Wayne, he is my favourite actor. I have lots of videos of his films."
There were 250 journalists in Baghdad accredited to the Ministry of Information at the beginning of February. Almost 4,000 more were asking for visas.
"You want to stay with us?" one ministry official asked sardonically. "You want to die with us?"
And pay for the privilege? was the question left unspoken
Saddam Hussein also watches videos. Among his favourites is said to be The Godfather. He will be 66 in April. Former associates, now in exile, say he has a bad back. He limps. He swims for exercise in pools in his palaces, often when he rises at 3 a.m. He hasn't been seen in public for years. But he is seen nightly now on Iraqi television. He wears a three-piece suit, he often smokes a Cuban cigar and he chairs meetings of his generals and commanders, almost always in a different room in a different palace. His son, Qusay, is usually in the picture. Qusay commands the Special Republican Guards, the elite force that is expected to be Saddam's last line of defence. Each evening Saddam makes his entrance at the top of the nine o'clock news. The reports resemble those seen on Soviet and Chinese television in the 1970s and 1980s. The goal is not to inform but to sanctify. The leader is in charge and busy. His authority is unchallenged. To demonstrate this, generals leap to their feet when he enters. In their enthusiasm some stand and shout that they are ready to sacrifice themselves for him. Others break into songs of praise of the Anointed One, Glorious Leader, Direct Descendant of the Prophet, President of Iraq, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, Field Marshal of the Armies, Doctor of its Laws, Great Uncle of all Iraq's peoples - to give him some of his titles.
Saddam responds graciously. "It is sweet to talk to you," viewers heard him tell his generals one evening. "Can someone bring some coffee for the people here?"
It must not be forgotten that the leader is a great military commander. These evening sessions on television are an opportunity for the public, and his enemies, to witness his grasp of strategy. "The enemy is not going to try penetrate the suburbs of Baghdad because he knows he is going to die. Even if he sends a million soldats, our men will kill them.
"The enemy depends on electronic jamming, on long-distance shelling and aerial bombing. If we minimize his efficiency in these areas, he will appear as a grain of sand when he stands before us on the battlefield."
Saddam is not afraid to borrow other people's tactics. "This is our faith. Look at our Palestinian brothers. They have followed the example of their ancestors and have transformed themselves into bombs against the invader."
The Great Uncle is also solicitous of his soldiers. He reminded one general that his men must wash regularly. The general was also to make sure that the water taps for the troops worked properly.
There is bravado, some of it plagiarized. "If they come, we are ready. We will fight them in the streets, from the rooftops, from house to house. We will never surrender." Winston Churchill would have been, let us say, intrigued by the new context in which his words find themselves.
There is also bluster laced with historical allusion. Saddam has promised on television that the new Mongol hordes will be crushed at the gates of Baghdad. This is not the most felicitous historical parallel to have chosen. The old Mongol hordes in 1258 were not crushed, but rather swept into Baghdad, smashing all before them.
Their arrival spelled the end of the Caliphate, the legal centre of Islam and symbol of its unity at the time. The Caliph himself pleaded for mercy. He was put to death. For good measure the Mongols left a monument to remind the locals of their passing in Tikrit, Saddam's home town. The monument was a huge pile of skulls.
Behind the bravado and the bluster seems, however, to be serious preparation. Saddam is a methodical man. He studied Stalin in his youth and copied the methods of the Soviet dictator. Like Stalin, he rose to power by becoming the spider at the heart of his party. He became the head of the Baath party security service, a job that others disdained. He used that position to torture and eliminate rivals.
He became the vice-president of the country in 1969. Like Stalin with Lenin, he controlled the security service that surrounded the president. He effectively sealed him off. Then, in 1979, he became the president himself. Like Stalin, he papered the country with portraits of himself. The cult of personality blooms lushly in Iraq.
The Baath party has now been in power for 34 years and Saddam has effectively controlled it during almost all of that time. In that period he has built a totalitarian political engine to which he alone has the key. There are overlapping internal security services that watch the population, the party and each other. There is the army and then there is the Republican Guard and finally the Special Republican Guard.
Running each of these organizations are men from his tribe or clan, or men, like deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz and son Qusay, who are entirely dependent on Saddam. They, in turn, bring in their clan colleagues. This is not a small group. One Iraqi analyst outside the country estimates they are 350,000 to 400,000 in number. He calls them the "coalition of guilt."
They have enforced the party's rule by force. Many have blood on their hands. Caught between a massive invading force and a restive population that has, in places, risen up before, they will fight. They will have to.
Saddam has learned from his mistakes. The centralized command structure from the Gulf War, which seized up when American missiles disrupted internal communications, has been abandoned. There are three regional commands, in the north, the south and the centre around Baghdad. The regional commanders will apparently have much autonomy. The key is the centre. The key is Baghdad.
"People say to me, the Iraqis are not the Vietnamese, you have no jungles and swamps to hide in." This was deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, speaking in the fall. "I reply, let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles."
"We have distributed tens of thousands of guns to the people," Aziz said at the end of January. "Do you think a regime that didn't trust its people would do this?"
"The Americans will be fighting ghosts. They will find it very hard to know where the enemy is. Those who are betting that Saddam will be defeated quickly are mistaken." This is the judgment of General Tawfik al-Yassiri. Al-Yassiri took part in a 1991 uprising against Saddam and now heads a council of exiled officers. The officers say they still maintain contact with their former comrades inside Iraq.
"Tens of thousands of elite Iraqi forces have spread underground, above ground, in farms, schools, mosques, churches … everywhere. They are not in camps or major installations. These units are prepared for city warfare and have the experience for it," al-Yassiri said.
Now the regime waits. The American government has made its pitch to the Security Council. The American president says he is impatient. Conflict appears to be coming. Saddam may be holding a losing hand but his message to the Americans is the same as that voiced by the man from the Ministry of Information: do you want to die with us? |
